Frank Rich: "Elizabeth Edwards For President"

Frank Rich, in his Sunday April 1st column, tackles a subject I hit upon earlier today on All Things Democrat. Rozius Unbound offers the full richness of Frank, but here's a fat sniplet:

Elizabeth Edwards' choice to stay in the political arena despite a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about Elizabeth Edwards. People admired her before she was ill for the same reasons they admire her now. She comes across as honest, smart and unpretentious — as well as both devoted to and independent of her husband. But we have learned a great deal about the political arena from the hubbub that greeted her decision. For all the lip service Washington pays to valuing political players who are authentic and truthful, it turns out that real, honest-to-God straight talk about matters of life, death and, yes, political ambition, drives “some people” (to use Katie Couric’s locution) nuts.

If you caught Elizabeth and John Edwards in the Couric interview on “60 Minutes” or at their joint news conference in Chapel Hill, you saw a couple speaking as couples chasing the presidency rarely do. When Ms. Couric gratuitously reminded Mrs. Edwards that she was “staring at possible death,” Mrs. Edwards countered: “Aren’t we all, though?” It’s been a steady refrain of her public comments that “we’re all going to die” and that she has the right to make her own choice to fight for her husband’s candidacy even as she fights for her life. There are no euphemisms or equivocations in her language. There’s no apologizing by either Edwards for the raw political calculus of their campaign plans. There’s no sentimental public hand-wringing about the possible effect her choice might have on her children. The unpatronizing Mrs. Edwards sounds like an adult speaking to adults.

Americans understood. A CBS News poll found that by more than two to one, both women and men support the decision to move forward. So do prominent cancer survivors in the media establishment, regardless of where they fall on the ideological spectrum: Tony Snow (before his own rehospitalization), Laura Ingraham, Cokie Roberts and Barbara Ehrenreich all cheered on Mrs. Edwards. But others who muse on politics for a living responded with bafflement and implicit moral condemnation — and I don’t mean just Rush Limbaugh, who ridiculed the Edwardses for dedicating themselves to their campaign instead of, as he would have it, “to God.”

No less ludicrous were those pundits who presumed to bestow their own wisdom upon the Edwards household as it confronted terminal illness. A Washington correspondent for Time (a man) fretted that “Edwards’s supporters, and surely many average Americans” will be wondering when his “duties as a husband and a father” will “trump his duty to his country and the cause of winning the White House.” (Oh those benighted “average” Americans!) A former Los Angeles Times reporter (a woman) who covered the 2004 Edwards campaign suggested to USA Today that “this is a time when they would want to be home together savoring every moment that they’ve got.” A Washington Post columnist, identifying herself as a fellow mother, faulted Mrs. Edwards for not being sufficiently protective of her children.

Get the rest here.

Classy, Caring, And Completely Human: Elizabeth Edwards

Words fail me as I keep replaying the words and affect today of Elizabeth Edwards, with her husband John, announcing that her cancer has spread YET she wants her husband to continue his campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination because it's that.

Totally and utterly fake is usually the best thing that can be said about most politicians and their spouses, sporting smiles that freeze their mouths yet never reach their eyes. You know that every single word has been engineered to draw the maximum calculated affect from the audience and that they've probably spent a bundle on marketing and focus groups to refine the message down to a science. You see it with Laura Bush and with Hillary Clinton; you see it also with male pols.

But that is NOT what I got from Mrs. Edwards today. Instead, I saw and heard a very genuine human being expressing most genuine feelings. It left me not just with a wildly heightened great respect for her - the mother of still young children - but also for John himself. When she told us that America needs her husband in a leadership role, I know she meant it with every fiber of her being; not just for blind ambition but for the good of the country.

Of course, Rush Limbaugh and others from the hate-hugging far right immediately attacked her and ridiculed John, coming close to suggesting that the announcement today was a stunt, a ploy to gain sympathy. How sick - truly pathological - is that? Poor Rush wants sympathy for his drug addiction - which I doubt he overcame - but the Edwards, he wants us to think, are so desperate for attention they "conjured up" metastatic breast cancer in a still-young woman.

Elizabeth is amazing. She deserves our respect.

My Very Best Wishes For The Edwards Family

I'm very sad to learn that Elizabeth Edwards, wife of 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate and current 2008 presidential race runner John Edwards, has been diagnosed with a metastatic spread of her 2004-diagnosed breast cancer to her bone (specifically, a rib).

The Edwards family today stated that her cancer is no longer curable (true enough) but can be treated. While some of the GOP pundit sites raced to say this meant John would automatically drop out of his bid for presidency, he has not done so. However, I also imagine this is a very hard decision to make: be there more for his wife and family at this hellish time OR proceed with a purpose, a vision, and a dream the two of them shared for a better United States of America. I do not in any way envy them the necessity of this choice. [Newt Gingrich, however, given his past history, would just divorce his wife so she wouldn't get in the way of his blind ambition - it takes a "great family values American conservative Republican leader like Newt to be such a class act; and before you tell me this is a terrible thing to say, check your history. He's already done it.]

However, I think I speak for most (probably ALL) here when I say that we wish the Edwards family the very best. I spent years working with cancer patients, especially the terminally ill. I know that despite metastases, some go on to lead very full lives for months and even years. I'm sure Elizabeth has the best care possible.